Kopykake Projector - Two Tips to Keep Cookies from Shifting

Welcome to Tuesday's Tips - where I share just a little something with you that I hope you'll find useful.

Today I have two quick tips for making sure that your cookie doesn't move under the image from a Kopykake projector.

* Swing the lamp around so that the projected image is close to the edge of the board.  No reaching!

* Tape a napkin to the board and place your cookie on it.  The tape keeps the napkin from moving.  The napkin keeps the cookie from moving because it's less slippery than parchment or wax paper.

American Flag Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing - Tutorial

It's Memorial Day. Today I'm thinking about and appreciating the sacrifice of our military and their families. I so admire anyone that has served our country. Their bravery and their willingness to sacrifice everything to defend us is something I find hard to truly understand. They fill me with awe. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

In honor of Memorial Day, I've made an American flag platter of sugar cookies with royal icing.

It was inspired by the Bearfoot Baker and Cookie Artisan.  I saw Cookie Artisan's platter on flickr first and thought about making my own version.  Then I saw the Bearfoot Baker's blog post and knew it was fate.

I decided to make a mini platter.  The cookies aren't minis.  The platter is.  It's just one dozen cookies.  If you're looking for a super fast and easy set of cookies, this is it.  Here's how . . .

I decided to add stars to the rectangles, just to change things up a bit.

When the dough is still raw, make an impression with a mini star cutter on the upper half.

If you can  fit four mini stars on your rectangle, that would be great.

I made two of these, but only ended up using one.  If you're making a large platter, you should make four of these.

Using blue royal icing, outline and flood the background.

Allow it to dry while you flood the rest of the cookies.

For one dozen, you'll need:
1 star cookie,
5 red,
3 white,
3 divided in half - red on top, white on bottom

Flood the white stars.  After they dry, outline them.

I decided to try one other version - 3D stars.

I made some mini stars and adhered them to a solid blue background with royal icing.

Please do as I say, not as I do . . . Use your background color icing to glue!  In this case, use blue, not white.  And don't use so much that it oozes out.  Sheesh.

Here's the second version.  I like the first one better.

Fast, easy, and oh so patriotic.

Perhaps I'll make the all star version like Cookie Artisan's for Fourth of July!

Vintage Pattern Embroidered Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

Mr KopyKake and I had a fabulous date last Saturday night. I already showed you the embroidered cat and knitting cookies that we created together.

Here are three more designs that we worked on. These are from vintage patterns.

Super adorable monkey!

Sweet little bluebird.

Too cute Scottie dogs.



I took the liberty of adding the vines and berries (or are those flower buds?).  I may have gone a bit overboard there.









Gotta love those vintage embroidery patterns!

You can see all of my embroidered cookies here.

Embroidery Pattern Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing - Cat and Knitting

I've been decorating cookies lately, trying to replicate embroidery. You can see the others here.

This time, I decided to use embroidery patterns, but pipe outlines instead of stitching lines.

These are Sublime Stitching patterns.

A very fashionable cat . . .

And cookies for a knitter . . .

That KopyKake is quite a fabulous piece of equipment.  The possibilities are just endless with it!

Baking Cookie Dough with Small Points - Tip Tuesday

Welcome to Tuesday's Tips - where I share just a little tidbit with you that I hope you'll find useful.

Do you ever bake cookie shapes that have small points like these tulips and houses?  Do those little pointy bits get over-browned?

I have a few tips for you.

The first is to know your oven. I know that the perimeter of my oven is cooler than the center. I make that work for me when baking these kinds of cookies.

I place them on the sheets with their little protrusions pointing toward the outside.  The parts of the dough with the largest area to bake are closer to the center of the oven.  (Just like the photo above - except spaced farther apart.  I moved them all in closer to snap a photo.)

If you're baking larger cookies, you'll obviously be baking them longer.  In that case, be prepared with small pieces of aluminum foil.  Place the cookies on the baking sheets the same way I just explained, but fewer of them.  After about six minutes, cover the pointy bits that are already baked through with the foil pieces.

I hope you'll give this tip a go the next time you're baking those hard to control shapes!

Happy Tuesday!

Embroidered Baby Flower Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

I embroidered these quite some time ago . . .

What?  You find them odd?  What's odd about a sweet baby face as the center of a flower?  Ha!  My husband finds them creepy.  They're from a vintage embroidery pattern. I think they're hilariously adorable and classic crazy vintage. 

I decided to replicate the pattern on sugar cookies with royal icing using the KopyKake . . .

What do you think? Sweet or creepy?

New House Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

Can you guess why I made these cookies?

No, I didn't buy or sell a house.

No, I don't have new neighbors.

Nope, I don't know anyone that has moved or is moving any time soon.

These were cookies for my Mom for . . . Mother's Day!  A tad unconventional, huh?

She was a realtor when I was a kid.  She recently renewed her license and just sold her first house this second time around.  I'm so proud of her.  The last time she worked in realty, there were no cell phones.  There was no internet.  I don't think they even had fax machines then.

She had to learn a lot of technical stuff to get this house sold, like editing documents and getting them signed online, then forwarding them to people.  I'm no techie, but definitely more techie than my Mom, and I don't know if I could have figured this stuff out.

One funny thing that she learned and shared with me was the phrase "copy you".  Her client told her that she'd "copy her" on an email.  Or maybe she wanted my Mom to "copy her".  Whatever it was, it was a revelation to good old Mom.

I hope that when I'm her age, I'm able to somewhat keep up with whatever crazy advances are happening.

So here is my "I'm proud of you", "Happy Mother's Day" present for Mom. Sugar cookies decorated with royal icing . . .

Moving trucks and keys.

Sold signs.

Cute houses and mini houses.

I had so much fun with these.  It was hard to stop.  I thought about adding siding lines to the houses, tiles to the roofs, a trellis around the doors. 




Bake at 350 was the inspiration behind these designs.





And unfortunately now . . .

Keepin' it Real . . .

This is the section in my posts to show you the cookies that I'd really rather not. The cookies that didn't quite live up to the dream.

Do you have any idea what these were supposed to be?

No, not a green flag of some imaginary country.

They were meant to be astro turf door mats!  Ha ha!

I saw some over at Cookie Crazie.  Aren't hers adorably hilarious?  It looks like she used green sanding sugar.  I decided to make mine using a #233 icing tip.  You know the one with a bunch of little holes?  I thought that it would make fabulous astro turf.  Well, it probably would if I had thicker consistency icing. 

The welcome mat cookies were the last ones I made of this batch.  It was 11 pm, the night before Mother's Day.  When the grass affect didn't work, I had a few choices . . . 1. thicken up the icing and try the #233 again, 2. make some green sanding sugar, 3. spread the icing around a bit and call it a night.

Obviously I chose #3.  I ate one and gave the other to my son.

The next time I have the occasion to make "new house" cookies, I'm going to try that 233 again with thicker icing!

Oh, and did you notice that all of the cookie designs are mirror images?  Yeah, baby.  You can read about that tip here.